


Under Your Skin

by greygerbil



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Aphrodisiac-Induced Mutual Accidental Dubcon, Canon Divergence - No Canon Romance, M/M, Vampire Blood As Aphrodisiac, mentions of past sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 14:37:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17082173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Drinking Jonathan's blood leaves Sean with all manner of unexpected thoughts and then even Jonathan's voice is in his head.





	Under Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I really liked your prompt and I hope this treat does it justice.
> 
> The usual warning for stories with both characters being under the influence of a magic aphrodisiac/blood bond apply: the sex is enthusiastic, but basically mutual dubcon.

When Sean sank down, his sight was growing blurry. Crying had earned him his nickname, but it had been a long time since he’d wept for himself. The tears came as unbidden as the memories that Reid had ripped open in his head, the nights spent staring out the window fretting over every little mistake he had made with the school master or at mass, fearing his caretakers would throw him out, since not even the very people who had brought him into the world could stand to have him, after all. As his knees hit the floor, he also thought of other, later nights when he’d closed his eyes tightly, trying hard not to think anything, separate his soul from his mortal body that was going through such ugly things. But it would have been manageable if Reid hadn’t lit those old wounds up in the stark glare of doubt that Sean always tried to ignore, pretending that there had never been moments when he’d wondered if God would be the next one to give up on him, or, as he’d sometimes thought in the black silence when it was all over and the priest had left, if he already had.

His throat was entirely closed up as Reid thrust his bleeding wrist at Sean and he wondered if he would vomit if he tried to taste it. Reid had been so kind to him when Sean had still been human. Sean had clung to the memory of Reid leaning down to him, the sound of his guiding voice and his firm touch, whenever he was at risk of spiralling into a panic as thoughts of poor William’s awful death trap of a den came back to haunt him. He’d looked forward to Reid’s visits at Pembroke every time, too. In all honesty before God, he may have fancied him a little, though of course he would never have told. To hear Reid’s voice become ice as he told Sean God had no plan for him hurt like a knife’s cut. Perhaps he believed the things Old Bridget had told Sean about vampires, that before an Ekon, a Skal was little more than vermin or a slave. If Sean wouldn’t listen because he wanted to, he would be made to listen.

He couldn’t speak for all Skals, but he certainly felt as small as a rat now and so what choice did he have but to obey? The fight had gone out of him. He was weak, too weak even to believe anymore. Reluctantly, he brought his lips to Reid’s arm, almost balking at the wet slide of bloody skin again his, overwhelmed by the iron scent that hit him like the smell of burning gasoline.

Then it was on his tongue, sweet like sugar and hot like fire. On his first swallow, the blood seemed to bypass his throat entirely, spreading instead through every vein in his body at once. The anguish, fear, and memories that had filled him completely were swept away like so much driftwood. He blinked and the tears caught in his lashes, but he did not cry; he was not sad anymore. Reid’s heartbeat was in his mouth and resonating through his body like the banging of a giant drum that drowned out his own feeble heart, making him wholly Reid’s creature. He couldn’t feel the floor anymore or see the outlines of the room; all that existed was Reid towering above him, staring at him with moon-coloured eyes.

When Reid tore his arm away, Sean doubled over, suddenly flung back into reality, and convinced immediately he’d fall through the earth without Reid. He reached out and caught him by the thighs, trembling fingers fisting into the fabric of his trousers. Reid grabbed his hand and Sean gritted his teeth, expecting to be torn off and discarded, but instead, Reid’s fingers tightened around his and he went to one knee. There was hunger in the way Reid looked at him, but he chased it off with a quick shake of his head.

“Sean?”

His voice came as through water. Sean brought his free hand to Reid’s shoulder, his fingers shaking badly, and clawed into his coat. It felt like the organs in his body were tying themselves into knots. He opened his mouth to ask Reid for help, but couldn’t make a sound.

Reid grabbed him tightly and pulled him to his feet as he himself stood, but Sean’s knees would not hold his weight and so he ended up slumped against him. Reid’s arm slung around his shoulders and the other hand let go off Sean’s as he lowered himself and pushed his arm under Sean’s knees, heaving him up into his arms. He just caught a glimpse of Reid’s face full of fear and confusion before the world went black.

-

When he woke, Sean found himself on cold concrete floor. Pooled next to his arm, he saw an empty sleeve of a coat which had been spread over him like a blanket. He considered the dark fabric, the patches at the elbows and shoulders, the long, loose belt, and, with a start, realised whom it belonged to.

Sean sat up as fast as he could, his head spinning. The heavy fabric fell off his shoulders. A light pressure on his back eased and from the corner of his eyes, he caught a hand moving away from him. They were in his morgue where he kept the dead.

“Careful. I think you went through another transformation. Your body needs time to adjust. You’re still at the shelter, I just brought you somewhere more secluded.”

Sean turned slowly. Reid sat behind him on his knees. The sight of him immediately brought back the pull Sean had felt when he’d drunk from him, though mercifully it was not quite as strong, or he would have thrown himself at him again. By the Lord, what had he been thinking? Nothing at all, he realised, in retrospect. The primal urge to get closer to Reid, as close as he in any way could, had motivated him entirely.

“I apologise,” he mumbled, mortified.

“There is no need. I should be the one apologising.” Reid considered him. “How do you feel?”

He felt like that time when he’d been ten and had almost died of a fever and then one morning he’d woken up and the heat in his body had finally broken, and it was like he’d escaped from a strange dream he hadn’t realised he was dreaming, his head clear in a way he had forgotten it could be. His change into a Skal had only occurred a couple of nights ago, and as Reid said, now it seemed like he was again transformed. He glanced carefully at the corpse of a customer of his who had fallen victim to the flu and which laid up on a table to his right, but the hunger gnawing was entirely gone. Thinking back on his conversation with Reid, he was suddenly embarrassed. Where had all his doubt been? Such hubris was not usually his vice. Only the pure would be saved? What was even pure in the mortal world? Everyone was a sinner, who knew it better than him? But God was merciful enough to care for all of them regardless, and it seemed He had sent Sean a cure in His wisdom.

“Better,” he admitted.

He was some version of himself, at least. Even the attraction to Reid, that longing, was more rooted in his own being than the arrogance with which he remembered himself speaking about William Bishop. Sean gripped his head with both hands, as if he could stop his racing thoughts by doing so. He had much to repent for…

Fingers grasped his chin and gently urged him to raise it and Sean lowered his hands slowly as he looked up into Jonathan’s pale eyes. It was not like before, when it seemed like some heathen god was towering over him; now he was but a man and still Sean felt the storm in him calm as his hand touched his skin. He could not even say if that was the connection of the blood or simply the trust he still wanted to put in Reid even after he had subjugated him so violently.

Slowly, Reid turned Sean’s head this way and that, looking at him closely.

“I haven’t had many Skal patients yet,” he said quietly. “And you and Old Bridget are... something utterly different, I think.”

“I’m not your lab experiment,” Sean whispered and managed to tear his head away, but when Reid’s palm caught him, cupped his cheek, he lacked the strength do it again.

“You’re not,” Reid said with some urgency, and for the first time it occurred to Sean that his own perplexity and discomposure were mirrored in Reid’s unsteady movements as his thumb ran over the bruised flesh of his cheek. “I just... need to figure out how to treat you. How to make sure I keep you healthy. I’m a doctor, after all.”

They looked at each other, crouching on the dirty ground together, the cloak bundled up between them. Eventually, finally, Sean managed to lean his head back and Reid let go, his hand brushing Sean’s shoulder as he did so. Sean immediately wanted his touch back and inched away in the hopes of stopping himself from searching it.

“I’m fine, I think I’m fine. I need some time.”

 _Leave_ , he wanted to shout, _leave before I don’t let you._

“Yes, of course.”

As Reid grabbed his coat and got up, his movements were so sluggish and hesitant it seemed like invisible hands were trying to pull him back down to the floor, to Sean. He stumbled to the door and threw it open with barely a glance back over his shoulder. Sean remained crumpled on the ground.

-

The clarity did not leave him again and Sean thanked God many times over for making Reid give it back to him. He could tend to his flock without being distracted by the thought that they were made up of thick organs and bones filled with marrow and juicy chunks of flesh. Some of his worst gashes and wounds had healed, though other scrapes and contusions just didn’t seem to want to get better, and he bruised as easily as overripe fruit. He hurt in some way most of the time, but you could get used to the ache. He would not complain; after all, he’d seen Old Bridget’s people. Most of them were falling apart, keeping themselves whole with bandages, their skin fraying like used-up clothes. He was lucky.

The trade-off for this relative health and sanity was his peace of mind. It seemed at every moment that his thoughts were not otherwise occupied, they returned to Reid – or Jonathan, as he had been tempted to call him now in some feeble attempt to break down the distance between them that hurt him so viciously. Though they had not seen each other for nine nights now (he kept count though he did not want to, dreading and longing for the moment Jonathan stood in his shelter again), he could still remember the touch of his hand as if it had just lifted from his skin. His head was in greatest turmoil when he laid down to sleep in the day and the distractions receded fully. When he was busy with his people at the shelter, his need for Jonathan was more like the itching notion that he had forgotten something important, the constant urge to look around and see if he couldn’t spot him, even knowing there was no reason for him to be there. Alone, however, the desire turned clearer and, to his great shame, animal, recalling the rush of pleasure as Jonathan’s blood ran down his throat and the fumbling intimacy of his touch. He pleaded with the Lord for forgiveness as he threw off the blanket and hoped the cold November air would help him, but it rarely did.

Sean did not sleep much those nine days.

On the tenth, he got up as soon as the sun was crouched behind the houses enough that he could wander outside without getting burned and started collecting blankets and sheets in the tents outside. Since his affliction allowed him to handle the sick without danger for himself, this was now just busywork instead of a dangerous task, and a sign that God had indeed given him a blessing in an initially hideous disguise.

It was in the middle of stripping a bed that the world suddenly turned red around him, like he was standing under a lamp bright with the colour of blood. Sean’s heart jumped against his ribs as he dropped the armful of cloth.

“Sean!”

Jonathan’s voice. Sean twisted his head around to find him and yet suddenly knew he wouldn’t. He could _feel_ Jonathan. His voice did not come from outside, it was resonating in Sean’s head like a thought not his own.

“I can’t – can you hear me? God, I hope you can hear me,” Jonathan said. “I just listened in on a group of hunters who said they were on the way to your shelter, sweep the docks area. I can’t intercept them. Too many people around. You have to leave. They won’t hurt your flock, not the living. The Guard is quite insistent on that principle. Still, uncommon as you are, I think they have experienced hunters with them who could recognise you for a Skal. They can’t be far, you have only some minutes. Run! You-”

The red drained from his sight as fast it had come. Sean stood in the middle of the tent with blankets piled at his feet, wondering if he was now going insane, after all. It had sounded as real as if Jonathan was standing in the tent with him, whispering in his ear.

But wasn’t the message a bit pragmatic to be the fantasy of a madman? He pulled himself together, thought on the sentences that had been injected into his head. Jonathan wanted him to hide from the Guard of Priwen – he knew those men by now, from what Old Bridget had told him, and he could well believe they were more likely to cause a blood bath at his shelter if he was here and recognised than if they just met the humans on their own. And thinking of Old Bridget, what about the people under her protection? He was not the only Skal at the docks. A few minutes were not much, but he had to warn them, too, at least try. Besides, the sewers would be the best place for him to hide.

Sean hurried into the shelter with his keys in hand. He opened the back door in his office and locked it behind himself before he ran through his morgue, unaffected by the smell of flesh, and clattered down the metal steps to the sewers. The key turned heavy in the lock, which was so seldom opened, and he shook the heavy gate to make sure that he’d locked up behind himself before he made his way through the damp, dark tunnel into the heart of the Skal hideout.

He spoke to the Skals when he met them outside in the dark corners and shadows of the streets, but it had been years since he’d last been down there, in their home. He’d been human still and an outcast and didn’t mean to go where he wasn’t wanted.

“The Saint.”

Sean raised his eyes at the sound of a raspy, breathless voice. Above him on a platfom stood a woman with half her face torn off, regarding him critically with her remaining eye. Sean remembered dimly that they had met a couple of times.

“Mrs. Smith,” he said. “May I please speak to Old Bridget? It’s urgent. You may be in danger.”

Martha Smith regarded him for a moment longer and then gestured at him to wait where he stood. Sean did so, glancing carefully around him. There were eyes on him, peering from the bridges and wooden walkways, many new faces he’d never seen, too. Even though he was a Skal himself now, he was still not truly one of them, and he had no idea how welcome he was. Still, Old Bridget would make sure they did not turn on him.

It did not take long for her to appear, her soft steps almost noiseless but for the quiet clicking of her pearls.

“Come here, boy,” she told him.

‘Boy’ – it was the gently teasing moniker she had given him when they had first met a decade ago and he had called her ‘my Lady’, since she would not give him her name and Sean had needed to address her in some way, after all. Back then, he’d thought at twenty-eight he was a bit old to be called a boy; now he knew that even at thirty-eight, he could hardly be more than that to her, given how many years she had seen pass by.

“Jonathan... Dr. Reid warned me that the Guard of Priwen is doing a thorough sweep of the area this evening,” Sean said, approaching her. “They may already be upstairs.”

“Is that so? They have been very watchful recently.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Did Thomas and Billy not want to go to the beach? Martha, quickly, see if you can fetch them back. It’s better if we keep our heads down tonight.”

“Yes,” Martha said eagerly, before setting off for one of the entrances to the labyrinthine sewers proper.

“I must ask shelter from you as well. I fear in my current condition, I am a danger to my flock when hunters turn up,” Sean admitted as he stepped up to her side.

“Of course,” Old Bridget said gently. “Where is Dr. Reid? Is he going to take on the hunters?”

“I don’t know.” Sean stopped himself. It sounded so ridiculous, but was not everything to do with vampires a little bit more magical than one had been led to believe was possible? “I only heard him in my head. I know it sounds mad, but his voice...”

A flicker of surprise passed over Old Bridget’s face.

“Jonathan Reid made a mental connection with you?”

It didn’t seem like the idea was entirely alien to her, which calmed Sean a little.

“Yes, I think.”

Old Bridget gave a an approximation of a shake of her head. “Who made that man?” she asked herself, thoughtfully. “You are not even his progeny. Just a touch of his blood gave him that power over you?”

At Sean’s no doubt uncomprehending gaze, she elaborated: “Only the strongest of Ekons can open that sort of connection to their progeny. No Ekon with such tremendous might would ever be in danger of turning a human into a Skal, though – all their progeny would be Ekons, too. Ekons that make Skals are obviously not nearly strong enough to speak to their children in this way, either. Things being so, I’ve never heard of one of our kind who can hear the voice of an Ekon in their head, since our creators are either feeble Ekons or other Skals, and we are the weakest of all. What a remarkable bond the two of you have...”

Sean knew Old Bridget too well to ask about the Ekon who had cured her, for he now knew there must have been someone for her as there had been for him, and also that she wouldn’t tell him who. If she said that this was unusual, then they could not have been as strong as Jonathan. Perhaps that explained the other, more embarrassing and vexing parts of their connection, too. However, he would have died of shame before the questions concerning that could have passed his lips.

“Well – thank you for your hospitality,” he just managed, ignoring the curious sideways glance she gave him. “I I will use this chance to talk to your people. I’m so busy upstairs these days, I barely get a chance.”

“Feel free. We have had a lot of new arrivals. I will introduce you. They could use a sympathetic ear. Harriet’s mood hasn’t improved, either.”

While Sean paid his visit to Harriet, who still mumbled angrily about the world and seemed barely to notice his presence, Martha returned with the two men Old Bridget had told her to get back. One of them, Sean knew as a baker’s son who had vanished some night ago. In fact, many of the newborns were from the docks and had met Sean when they’d been alive. He did his best to try to find familiar features whenever he spoke to someone he didn’t know, but unlike Billy, some of them had been mangled so badly in their transformation that they were completely unrecognisable. He was not yet so selfish that this didn’t keep him from his own comparatively petty troubles and so was much engaged in drying tears and reassuring broken hearts until, just as Old Bridget and him crossed over another one of the many wooden bridges, Jonathan’s voice in his head made him stumble.

“Sean?”

He stopped with a hand on the banister.

“Jonathan?”

“I doubt he can hear you,” Old Bridget said, her outline almost lost in the red haze next to him and her voice sounding far away. “If I know anything about it, at least. Even the few elders I have met only learned to control the power well enough to allow that after decades of experience. Some don’t want to. They want their progeny just to listen.”

“I’m at the shelter,” Jonathan’s voice said, talking over her. “You can come back. The Guard are gone. If I reached you – if you managed to leave. I so hope you did.”

The insecurity in Jonathan’s words told Sean it was not arrogance that made Jonathan keep the connection one-sided.

The red brightened and faded and Sean shook his head.

“Jonathan wants to see me. I should return upstairs... thank you for having me here again.”

“Thank you for coming. I think the Skals will have an easier time accepting you now, so there is no trouble in you being downstairs more often. We could need you,” Old Bridget answered.

“Of course.”

Sean did vow to visit his poor turned flock again as soon as he could, but though it was shameful, he was drawn by the promise of Jonathan’s presence like a puppet on a string. With hasty steps he followed the path back, almost getting lost in the maze that was the Sewer Shelter, and opened the heavy door with an insistent push of his shoulder, locking it behind himself. Through his morgue he entered his office, where Jonathan was pacing before the open wings of his shrine.

It was like being hit in the face, seeing Jonathan, and once he grew aware of Sean’s presence, he stopped dead in his motion, too. They looked at each other for a split second and before Sean had even a chance to form a thought, he was halfway across the room and meeting Jonathan in the middle. Sean grabbed him by the collar of his coat to pull him down, one hand sliding into his neck when Jonathan bent down, feeling the prickle of his short-cropped hair, and Jonathan kissed him like a drowning man drew air. It was open-mouthed and sloppy and he noticed a prick of fangs against his lips, but the pain didn’t bother him as Jonathan squeezed him close enough to force the air out of his lungs. Within moments, Sean’s thoughts, which had been turning and turning in panicked circles around his desire, smoothed out into blissful, wordless joy. Jonathan’s hands slid over his body, under layers of fabric, and when he lifted his head to gasp for air, Sean surprised himself by going in for the kiss that was easiest at his height, a press of wet lips against Jonathan’s pale neck. Instincts and searing need made up for the experience he lacked and the appreciative, breathy noise he drew from Jonathan told him he was doing right – and what Jonathan thought was _all_ that mattered.

There was a leg pushed between his and Sean felt his hips twitch against the hard plain, like some cur, and still he didn’t have it in him to be embarrassed because of the way Jonathan smiled when he took Sean’s face into his hands and burned him with a sinfully wanton gaze that was hard to stand up to for how quickly it went to his core. He was entirely aflame at this point and his courage surpassed his sense when he reached between them to feel the bulge in Jonathan’s trousers that was nudging insistently against his hip. Jonathan groaned as Sean’s fingers squeezed him, allowed him to rut against the flat of his palm, rubbed the outline of the length he could feel through the fabric, mouth dry with need.

Jonathan’s hands were at the hem of his trousers, suddenly, and pulled them down, underwear and all. Sean wanted less between them after this abysmally long wait, no cloth, just skin, and he helped, kicking off his shoes, leaving them in the tangled pile where his trousers fell, and quickly attaching himself once more to Jonathan after the brief separation with all the forceful purpose of a magnet seeking its opposite force. As they were kissing with Sean’s arms wrapped around Jonathan’s neck, the angle shifted suddenly and Sean lost his footing. Jonathan had picked him up and, in an effort to ease the weight, Sean reflexively put his legs around him, pushed himself up on his shoulders with his arms. Jonathan, however, had thought of another means of stabilising them, as he backed Sean into the cold wall.

Sean was still occupied tearing Jonathan’s waist coat and shirt open when Jonathan shifted him to lean harder against the bricks, carrying his weight with one arm for a moment as he spat into his other hand. The purpose of that only became obvious to Sean when he heard the rustle of Jonathan’s trousers and felt the thick manhood that brushed the back of his thigh. He could hear the wet noise as Jonathan gave himself a couple of cursory strokes with his damp hand before he adjusted the seat of Sean’s body, lining up against his entrance.

Some part of him was vaguely aware that he should be nervous, but his human mind had long lost control to something determined to give itself to Jonathan completely. It was not easy to relax, for Jonathan felt immeasurably big as he pushed inside him. Sean was showing his teeth like an animal, growling, but the pain was to be conquered, not fled, and Jonathan’s kisses fell on his face and made it worth it. He rocked into Sean’s body half inch by half inch until Sean was reasonably sure he must be in his stomach, and he was all filled up with Jonathan and so glad that he finally, finally had him where he needed him.

There was little rhythm to the way Jonathan fucked him and Sean had even less control over it with no other purchase but Jonathan’s own body, his heels digging into the small of Jonathan’s back, urging him on. His spine hurt from the way he was bent, and his shoulders chafed against the wall, and Jonathan was spearing him painfully, and Sean loved every second of it, hoping his body would carry the bruises for a while. Jonathan’s breath came in laboured gasps, mixing with Sean’s small, choked sounds, and the noise of their flesh coming together.

He climbed the peak quickly with Jonathan bending him in half, fucking his mouth with his tongue to accompany the thrusts with which he claimed him. In a sudden burst, all the heat that had set his mind on fire imploded, leaving Sean with Jonathan’s name quiet on his lips, tumbling into Jonathan’s mouth in a kiss. His body went comfortably pliant in Jonathan’s arms after and he stroked his hair, the back of his neck, until he felt Jonathan’s grip turn bruising tight as he spent himself inside Sean.

Jonathan heaved him forward, up, into his arms, his head leaning against Sean’s shoulder as they both rested against the wall. Past the strands of his dark hair, Sean was looking at the open shrine at the other end of the room.

It was this sight that finally brought him back to earth, a painful crash landing. Where half-naked in Jonathan’s arms had seemed to be the most natural place in the world a second ago, he now felt like Adam after swallowing a chunk of the apple of knowledge, suddenly aware of his own shame. Before he had time to think of what to say, however, Jonathan raised his head, staring at Sean wide-eyed.

Quickly, he lifted him off his manhood and set him down on his feet, apparently as much at a loss for words as Sean was. As Sean scrambled for his discarded trousers, Jonathan’s seed was wet between his cheeks and thighs and Sean wanted to think it was simply an uncomfortable feeling, but part of him liked it, despite the blood rushing into his head as the enormity of his actions became clear to him.

“Are you alright?”

Of all the things that could have come out of Jonathan’s mouth, this was not one Sean had anticipated. His hands, which were shoving his shirt back under his waistband, stalled as he looked up at him. He seemed younger, with his hair mussed and his clothes ruffled, rakish, more attractive for the fact that Sean knew he had left him in this state. _Lord have mercy, what am I thinking?_

“I apologise, there was – ever since you gave me your blood...”

“Yes, I felt it, too,” Jonathan said, sparing Sean the duty to put his unworthy thoughts into words. “I tried to avoid this place for that very reason, but when I saw these hunters, I knew I had to do something to protect you. You heard me, then?”

“I did. Thank you.”

Sean averted his gaze. It did not make sense to feel the heavy lead of disappointment in the bottom of his stomach. Of course Jonathan would not want to come back. Whatever his base instincts had dictated, in his higher mind he obviously did not want to mate with Sean, or with a Skal, or maybe even a man. It was all twisted desire caused by their mingled blood.

“You did not answer my question,” Jonathan said after a moment.

Oh yes, how was he? Sean couldn’t even begin to say.

“I don’t feel that fire in me anymore. That which drove me to you,” he noted, after a moment.

“Me neither. God, what happened here? I have other progeny – progeny who are properly mine, even. I never felt like this towards them.”

Sean wondered who Jonathan had decided to turn and why, but knew it was not his place to ask. They were not truly close.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a Skal. They say we are lower... it’s a word for ‘slave’, isn’t it? That’s what Old Bridget told me.”

“Maybe.” Jonathan leaned on the table with both hands, forehead creased. “Or maybe it’s because of what I already felt for you. In that case, I deeply apologise.”

Sean stared at him, wondering if he was meant to understand what Jonathan implied. “What you felt?” he echoed.

Jonathan gave something like a smile, too tight and bitter to be a true one.

“I know you have every reason to be angry with me, Sean, but I have liked you from the start. You have such a kindness, and yet your will was unbroken even after everything I heard and saw happened to you. With three years of war behind me, it was a relief to find a soul like yours, good and strong even after struggle. And – I’ve always had a fondness for the Irish brogue.” It was perhaps a joke, but Jonathan sounded too nervous to sell it. “But believe me, Sean, I had no intentions to imprint my desires upon you like this, if that is indeed what happened. I would never force someone...”

Jonathan seemed so honest and so frightened that finally Sean snapped out of his shock. He had always been at his most useful when someone needed him and Jonathan was taking a weight upon his shoulders he shouldn’t have to bear. No, Jonathan was not like the man Sean had known at the orphanage. Though the temptation to hide his own feelings was there, Sean knew better than to give in to it. He had done enough outrageous things tonight to make lying another one of his sins.

“If our desires before that night played a part in it, I am just as likely to be at fault,” Sean said quietly. “Don’t blame yourself.”

He could feel Jonathan’s eyes on him, but after what they had just done, he found it all but impossible to look him in the face. However, Jonathan took him by the shoulders and turned Sean so he would face him, without any of the vehemence that had been in their latest meetings. It was a gentle touch, easy to fall under.

“Can you still say the same after what happened between us?” he asked, hope flickering in his voice.

Sean thought briefly. He was still cross with Jonathan. He was afraid of the power he had over him, both as an Ekon and as a man. Most of all, however, he feared that Jonathan might walk out the door to never come back and hold Sean this way again.

“Yes,” he answered.

Jonathan kissed him, a chaste, slow touch of their lips. After the consuming passion it was a relief and yet a reminder that this man probably needed no vampire magic to throw Sean into such a fever again with just a few touches. Sean was giving in to sin, but it truly felt like something too tender to deserve the name.

Finally, Sean turned his gaze up at Jonathan’s face when they parted. Jonathan gave him a pale smile.

“I have to go,” he said. “I have a cure to find for this terrible disease. I am so close! But when I return... we should talk.”

“Can I help you in any way?” Sean asked.

Jonathan sighed as he stepped back. “Pray for me. I may not be a great believer, but I have a bad feeling I might need all the divine protection I can get. If _you_ ask for it, God may even have mercy on someone like me.”

It was not a joke, and Sean felt his stomach twist in response.

“I will. I will pray you come back to me,” Sean said.

Jonathan nodded his head, hesitating on his way to the door and turning again to give him another brief and desperate kiss before he hastened out of the office. Sean sagged into a chair, feeling the ache inside him now. He believed Jonathan that he would return if he could – but he still wondered if he would ever see him again.


End file.
